The Abyssal Incline
by TheMoonAlwaysFalls
Summary: Prostitutes don't get much credit. Some of them are productive members of society. Still, some of them die the same way they lived: precariously, voraciously, and resolutely alone. -Kenpachi/OC; permanent hiatus
1. Upward Movement

_"Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends." - Shirley Maclaine_**  
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Men are motherfucking whores. Yeah, sometimes, they're worse than we women are. Of course, most men don't parade around in miniskirts and slingbacks, but they tend to have a more loose set of sexual standards. Note that "sometimes" is the operating word here, so don't come a-knockin' on my door hollering about sexist views or anything. I got enough of that in the human world.

For about a hundred years after I departed from the human world, I lived in the area surrounding the main part of the Seireitei. I didn't live in the gutters of the eightieth district thankfully, but I still didn't end up in the inner circle. Most of us don't; the rich only account for the inner eight districts. There are fifty-two poor ones to compensate for the silver-spoons.

Of course, if I'm going to gossip about the dismal living conditions, it's going to bring me to the makeup of the outer section of the spirit world. The very outskirts of the inhabited area are made of beings that spend their time in the gutters. They are starving, poor, and filthy. The majority are diseased in one way or another. Around the sixtieth district, going until the thirtieth or fortieth, clusters of prostitutes start appearing. These are the areas that are poor, but can get enough food so that the people are still considered healthy (healthy meaning they aren't bags of skin and bones). The thirtieth district and up is where the middle-class-to-aristocrats live. The prostitutes disappear into the high-class brothels and such, and children and adults aren't starving or rotting in sewage gutters.

I lived in the fifty-first district for the majority of my first hundred years. Every day, on every street corner, I saw people soliciting their bodies, their personal image, for money. I saw women in kimonos that were either too small for them or had been modified in such an obscene way that the dress couldn't be classified as a kimono anymore. Sometimes the women would forgo clothing altogether and parade around with their breasts drooping and a length of cloth around their genitals. The men were just as bad, if not worse. Take for instance the man I became most familiar with: he worked the streets totally nude, his fat throbbing cock hanging in the open for all to see. He adorned himself in strips of leather and handled all sorts of toys –completely BDSM worthy.

I didn't see much of the death in the gutters, but I saw the remnants of what drifted out of the eightieth district. Severed body parts, diseased corpses riddled with decay, dead children floating along as easily as paper boats; no one was spared. Some of the coprses had been poked full of holes. The lacerations were infected and shriveled around the lips, crusted over with pus and blood. Spurts of liquid would dribble out if the body was touched; it was a foul-smelling yellow gel that reminded me of jellied piss. It was rotten and scarring; and I used to wonder why the older beings were so unstable and jaded.

When I heard about the shinigami, I found a little hope that maybe I wouldn't become what the older beings were. Rude, foul-mouthed, inappropriate; I wanted to be a force of good. I can tell you, you're going to find out real quick just how that turned out, but I'll tell you it didn't go well.

Pardon me, I have a bad habit of rambling. Where was I? Ah, the shinigami. I heard that they were paid good salaries just to fight and beat the shit out of each other. Some did paperwork for hours, but I could deal with that. I could read and write –it's one of the basic skills carried over from the human world. No memory of life, of course, but common sense is allowed. I thought that being a shinigami would spare me from whores, male and female, and from the disease in the gutters. As per usual, I was wrong. I learned about whores that didn't fuck.

In the Seireitei, I learned that there are many kinds of prostitutes: the ones who fuck, the ones who fight, and the ones who survive. The latter lives to work another day, the two former hardly live to enjoy the money they earn.

Where am I going with this? The wheels and cogs in my brain keep turning and spew useless information about subjects no one cares for. The truth is, I don't know where I'm going with this. There are people here in the Seireitei with much more interesting stories than mine, and consequently, my story is more interesting than people like, say, Byakuya Kuchiki who was born with a golden spoon in his mouth.

So, where _am_ I going with this? Maybe my story is interesting. If you want to go the inspirational route, it's the story of a drug-addled third seat, trying to survive in the Twelfth Division. Feeling a little melodramatic? Then it's the sad story of a woman screwed with by narcotics, painkillers, emetics, and anything else. Wanna be upbeat about this whole mess? It's the hilarious story of a woman with an artificial bladder and urinary tract (thanks, Captain Kurotsuchi). Wishy-washy? The romantic story of a woman in love (I cringe at the word) with a brutal, battle-scarred man more messed up than she is. I take pride in the fact that the shriveled, blackened, dead thing pulsating in the middle of my chest isn't completely stone.

My story starts some six-hundred years ago. In human terms, I died in approximately 1403; it took me a while to do the math (multidimensional time-space configuration is a pain in the ass). Like all spirit beings in the Seireitei, my human life is long forgotten, or it would be if I ever had the chance to remember it. Years of narcotics can do that to a person.

My very first memory of spirit life was waking up to find myself lying on a mattress in a brothel. I didn't find out that it was a brothel until some time later. The smell of sweat, sex, and urine permeated the air, and hung in a fog so thick I could almost detect a slight yellow haze. The smell of the place will forever be a permanent stench hiding just under my nose. I can describe it to the letter –the sweat was heady and sweet, bitten with just the slight odor of rot. Sex, well, sex smells like sex. It has its own reek; warm and rancid, filled with the remainder of hormones and lust. Urine just smells like piss, bitter and foul.

I didn't stay in the brothel for long; I grew tired of the moaning and the smell of semen. While I was there, I willingly worked. I gathered forty gold coins a pop, so to speak. It was rather good money for a whore; I was nubile and young, unscarred and soft. I was the favorite until the woman in charge found the boy from the seventy-first district. I have to say, I feel sorry for that child. Even at my peak, I didn't get as much business as that little scrap of meat.

After I left, I wandered the streets of the fifty-first district for weeks, sleeping under bushes and in alleys. It hardly rains in the Seireitei, so I was at least safe from that. I was almost beginning to miss that brothel, though. At least I had a bed, even if it was just a straw mattress, even if it did smell like a hundred whores, even if it had probably been pissed on a few times. It was still shelter and someplace relatively safe, and I had left it on caprice to chase a dream. Foolishness serves the empty.

In those alleys, I learned to fight. What could I have fought other than my fellow homeless people, a person may ask? Rats. Big, fat, rabies-infected, fucking rats. I don't mean the cutesy little mice and helpful vermin from fairy tales and kiddie books, I mean vicious little ass-biters. These little boogers were infected with more diseases than an anorexic hooker. I have more scars from rat bites than I have scars from battles. In fact, bits of my skin are yellow, pink, and all manner of other wonderful rainbow colors from where the bites got infected. I had no medical treatment, so I was left to fight the infection with my steadily improving immune system.

I don't know exactly how long I lived on the streets, but I remember approximately how long I lived with Shiko.

Who was Shiko? Shiko was a whore, and a very successful whore at that. She taught me why she was so successful. She taught me how to really have sex, or, at least, sex with another woman. Since then, I've come to understand that having sex with men is quite a bit different.

Shiko was possibly the most wonderful person I've ever known. Okay, I'm lying, but that's not really new. Despite the fact that she constantly smelled like sweat, musk, and sex (I suppose I smelled the same way for a while), she never complained. She never batted an eye when she was called out for being a prostitute, she never argued with me, nor did she ever tell me to leave. As far as I'm concerned, Shiko was a good person.

I lived with her for thirty years. In that time, she introduced me to her pimp. He was, in accordance with pimping, a drug pusher. That drug pusher, in turn, introduced me to my first true love: painkillers. He had warehouses stocked floor-to-ceiling with little white tablets made from the concentrated extract of ginseng from the human world. Those itty-bitty little tablets varied in strength; they could stop the sting from a rat bite, or they could take a person around the whole fucking world for a night. It all depended on what I was willing to pay. Or willing to steal.

I'd like to say that I could remember what went on during those thirty years. I'd also like to say that I could recall who exactly Shiko was, other than a prostitute. If I ever were to say these things, I'd have to call myself a liar. In those three decades, and for many of years after, I was lost in a semi-permanent narcotic stupor.

I would talk about the times I had during those years, if only I could remember them. My days consisted of twenty minute periods in which I would wake up -often in the the strangest places- and eat whatever wasn't too rotten, and then take a few pills and drift back off into my colorful haven of rainbows and weightlessness. I could try to remember those times, but I'm afraid of what I would remember. Therefore, I will leave those thirty-odd years in the dark. In any case, my story doesn't truly start until my time at the Academy.

At the time I hit the one-hundred-and-twenty-year mark, I began to finally wake from my narcotic stupor. I don't think I ever would have come out of it if not for the drug pusher's death. How did he die? Who else but the shinigami could manage it?

On the day of the pusher's death, I remember my twenty minute period of consciousness. I was strolling to go buy (steal is a more accurate term here) more of the tablets to help with the pain from the rat bites. As I came up on the warehouse where the pusher kept his wares, I saw the team of shinigami in uniform. They had the pusher in a tight grip; he struggled to resist, and before he could break free, a man with a white haori drew his sword and sliced the pusher's head off. It came off perfectly clean, gushing fountains of hot, sticky blood. My stupor ended there.

I was thoroughly amazed at the precision of the man's execution. I was entranced by the exact technique and the efficiency in which my drug pusher was killed. With half my brain cells asleep or dead, and without a second thought, I followed this little squadron all the way back to the tenth district.

I lost the squadron somewhere between a classy brothel -or "escort service" as they call the clean whorehouses- and a coffeehouse. I remember sitting on the street corner, wearing little more than rags, watching the middle-to-upper class citizens walk by. I remember the looks of pity and the looks of disgust that I received from all who passed, as if I didn't deserve to even live. A few of the more generous people threw me coins; one man gave me his coffee. That night, I retreated into the alley; even the rats here seemed richer than the rats in the fifty-first district.

I didn't leave the alley the next day; I didn't want to see the looks of pity and hate from passerby. I may have been a scrap of street trash, but I still had feelings. I still had a little pride, a little shame. I sat behind a trash can, doped up from the last few tablets that I had. My hallucinations were vivid and colorful, so much so that I can still remember what I was tripping on. The sky was royal purple, the streets were hot pink, and the rats were the color of dripping acid.

At one point, the drugs began to wear off. I was exhausted and my head pounded as if a drum were strapped to my cerebellum. I felt like dying right there in the alley; let the aristocrats scrape my body from the stone pavement and damn them all. As I passed into unconsciousness, I felt a pang of fear, the most powerful fear anyone can ever feel: the fear of death.

I felt like I was drowning. A black blanket swallowed me whole. Shadows danced like demons in heat, fucking and grinding against each other in a powerful hellish mating ritual. I was scared to death; I had no idea what was going on.

I don't know how much later, but to my immense surprise, I woke up. That's it: I woke up. One minute, I'm out cold watching fictitious demons defile each other, and the next, I'm wide awake. I took a moment to become familiar with my surroundings, and I found them not unlike the first time I woke up more than a hundred and twenty years ago. I heard screaming, moaning, and beds creaking; I smelled sweat, lust, but this time I caught the odd undertone of lemons. I saw a man and a woman in the bed next to me going at it with such abandon that I thought the bed would collapse.

It turned out that the mistress of the escort service, a woman who looked like she should be a bookkeeper or a secretary instead of the owner of a whorehouse, found me in the alley while taking out the trash. She ordered two of the male prostitutes to bring me in and put me on one of the beds. I'd been unconscious for three days, half dead and moaning. According to Mistress (she never gave anyone at the service her name; we were all required to call her Mistress), I'd reacted badly to the caffeine-and-painkiller mix, and my body didn't know how to fight the affects.

Mistress let me live at the brothel for a week, feeding me, prepping me, trying to negotiate service from me. She offered me a private bed for my services, three meals, clothing (what little I would need), and one day off a month. I was in no position to turn down kindness -if one could call her offer kindness- and I was in her employment within a matter of days.

Mistress began to condition me for the art of sexual liberation, which meant that I had to gain weight, retain what little color I had left in my skin, and go through narcotic detox. Mistress gave me supplements to gain weight; she made a poultice daily to bring back the natural color of my skin and diminish the discoloration from the rat bites (it didn't actually work).

The first time Mistress let me look in a mirror was the day before I was to begin working for her. Mistress took me into her room at the back where she had a full-length mirror. I was undressed and made to stand in front of the mirror.

I had none of Mistress's gregarious beauty. Whereas her skin was smooth and pale, my skin was covered in tiny little scars. Her eyes were clear, if not a little obtrubent. My eyes were glassy and bloodshot. I had a one-up on her in only one area: my chest. After the rigorous regime of vitamins and hearty food, my breasts had filled out. For this reason, Mistress told me, she'd asked me to come under her service. Apparently many of her clients had a breast bondage fetish -this was hilarious to me, as I didn't think aristocrats could even become aroused. I thought they were walking stone statues.

Sexual liberation is not a thing to be taken lightly. During my hundred plus years, I thought that sex was just a fact, a natural occurrence that required no planning. I thought that there was no feeling in it, that men were getting off because their wives wouldn't do it with them. Sex was much more than that, especially the forms that I was contracted to engage in.

In that brothel, sex did not illicit positive feelings. I came out of my private room bruised and sore, often brutilized until I couldn't walk. That was just the name of the game, though. It wasn't cruel; it was just business. Mistress knew which of my patrons were rough with me; in the instances where I couldn't walk, she would bring my food to me and sit and talk while I ate. She was always cheerful, and it seemed she became even happier with my arrival. I was the only whore in the inner districts who could be contracted to engage in bondage sex, and I was bringing in a lot of money.

Eventually, in addition to bondage, Mistress made me available to women as well as men. At the end of my same-sex encounters, I was always left amazed that the aristocratic men had no idea that their wives walked on the crooked side of the highway.

When I wasn't being contracted, Mistress allowed me to read. She brought in countless books to keep me happy (with the addition of my bisexuality, I brought in double; I don't think she wanted me to leave), and as long as I was given books and food, I had no intention of running off. These conditions suited Mistress just fine; her monthly expenses may have increased, but her monthly intake was on steroids by that time.

Amazingly enough, I never got pregnant. I never even had a scare. By the time I learned that I could get pregnant, I was almost exclusively contracted to women, so there was no reason for me to worry. Since she had more money and could afford to add on another paycheck, Mistress had brought in another whore to take care of the men who had a bondage fetish. The other whore was the one who had the pregnancy scares, and the one who dealt with the abortions.

I don't condone abortion. I've seen too many dead children in the sewers, babies who hadn't even gotten the chance to live. I've seen half-formed fetuses and little shriveled things that might have been someone's uterus. I do believe in a woman's right to choose though, but the other girl made her choice for business. I hated that.

I was a hundred and seventy when _he_ came in, the Shinigami who taught at the Academy. He'd heard about me from his colleague, a woman with dark purple hair and a big mouth. I'd forgotten about the squadron, but I recognized this man; he was the one who killed my drug pusher. When he came in for my services, I made him stay longer. I found out about him:

Daisuke Koriko, captain of the Twelfth Squad, teacher at the Academy, and raging sex addict. (For timeline purposes, I'll inform you that he had the title of captain before the man who preceded Kisuke Urahara; I was a in the Maggot's Nest by the time Urahara even came into the squad.) Koriko told me why he came to me: he found a certain enjoyment, a certain fascination in the boundary between pain and pleasure. Sexual intercourse was the closest thing to that specific boundary that he'd ever experienced, and he claimed that he liked to explore it for that reason. My certain brand of prostitution was just a step closer to that symbiosis due to the cruel nature of it.

I inquired him of the qualification a person would need to have to be accepted into the Academy. He said that all I needed to do was fill out an application, and I would be contacted. I decided to get an application on my day off.

I'd never used one of my days off before. I'd never had a reason to. I didn't have family or friends, no one from a previous acquaintance to visit. Mistress didn't encourage the days off anyway, but she always told me that if I never needed one, she would be my escort around the districts. I finally took her up on that offer, much to her distaste.

Of course, Mistress didn't encourage me to fill out the application to the Academy. She knew that if I was accepted, I wouldn't be coming back. She was gracious though, only because of my services, she would no longer need to work another day in her life. If I quit, she quit, and she would auction off the brothel, or close it down and sell the contracts of all the men and women in her employment. Either way, she was in a position of great power and in a position to make a great deal of money.

The day finally came when I was contacted by the Academy. I had been accepted, as I later learned, on the good word of Daisuke Koriko. As I also later learned, he was looking for a freebie when he put in that good word. I suppose it pays to be sexually uninhibited sometimes.

The start of the next term was more than a month away. I helped Mistress with her preparations to close the brothel and auction off the contracts. I was good with calculations, and I assumed that she was grateful for my help. Not that she ever showed it; she was just miffed that I quit. No word of thanks was ever uttered from her mouth.

At the end of the month, the escort service was gone, and I was well on my way to being a full-fledged shinigami. I was two hundred years old at the time.

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**10/11/10: **_This chapter has been updated and added to. I plan to do this with the rest of the chapters and add a new chapter sometime in the next two weeks. I finally found the motivation to finish this story._


	2. Stealthily Salacious

_I will not be as those who spend the day in complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe_**  
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I've never been one for thinking my personal problems through. Can I analyze a literary work and tell all of the symbolism? Yes. Can I work through mathematical equations? Yes. Can I supervise complex medical experiments? Yes. Can I think before I kick the guy next to me in the crotch for calling me a whore? No.

So began my first day at the Academy...

I arrived with Mistress in tow. We were both a sight for sore eyes: Mistress was dressed like some sort of high-end businesswoman, totally contradictory of her true profession. Yes, she is a businesswoman, just not one who wears nice uniforms or buns in her hair. My new uniform was two sizes too big; I believe the receptionist who took my size must have smudged the numbers by accident –or on purpose. I wouldn't doubt it if she had. In fact, there are not a whole lot of things I would doubt about a bored receptionist.

Mistress hadn't had time that morning to put on her many layers of makeup, and she looked like the ass end of a mule when she wore the natural look. She had a rather bad case of eczema that no ointment could subdue, so she piled on makeup as a remedy. In reality, it just made it worse, but she was adamant about caking it on.

I wasn't very well prepared for my first day at the Academy. In a fit of anxiety, I had stolen a few of Mistress's little white tablets –not that I'm proud of course. They were the ginseng tablets; not strong enough to send me into hallucinations, but they had just enough bite to make me a little bit too carefree. I wasn't keeping a very tight check on myself at that moment.

I suppose I should thank Mistress. After all, she'd taken me in (even if it had been in exchange for my services), given me food and a place to live, given me money and frivolities. In the whole time that I was under her employment, I'd never seen her treat anyone else like she'd treated me. I really quite enjoyed being her special favorite. There were so many privileges.

Mistress stayed with me during the orientation. She sat dutifully by my side without complaining, though she did not offer any words of encouragement. She just pulled out her compact to fix her makeup. I tried to dissuade her from doing this because it was rude, but she was off in her own little world. Not much can be said for her manners, but I don't suppose she got where she was by saying 'please' and 'thanks you' to everyone.

I sat back and listened to the speaker. Captain Koriko -for it was he- was explaining the classes that could be taken. I started to zone out and watched Mistress tend to her mascara. I noticed the boy next to me staring quite hard, and I turned around to ask him what his fucking problem was.

Before I'm called sexist, let me explain. I don't like men. I don't trust them, I don't enjoy them, and I don't like them. Most men view women as objects or property, and they don't quite understand that we are more than a simple toy. Some men are gentlemen, yes, I've met them. A person doesn't get to be my age without meeting a _few_ good people. Yet, some men are the equivalent of cavemen eating mud. Men and I are like ketchup and doughnuts; we just don't mix well. I can tolerate them, but I just can't seem to get along with them.

I turned around and snapped at him to stop staring. I wouldn't have snapped if he didn't look like "the type". Other men don't quite know what women mean when we say "the type". Women, though, can describe "the type" to a T, all the way down to the slightly unkempt eyebrows. "The type" all look different, and I can accept that, but they all have the same demeanor: sleazy.

He gave me a harder look, like he'd really like to talk back, but he didn't say anything. To me, that is. He turned to the boy next to him and started whispering like a bandit. Somewhere in the jumble of all of those whispers, I caught "whore" in the mix. I'm glad to say that Mistress did too, and she did not look pleased.

I suppose from a third person point of view, Mistress and I did a simultaneous head turn. At that moment, I wasn't too concerned about what people were thinking. They could think what they wanted to; I can't stop them. I can, however, express my opinion about how much I like to be called a whore. I know what I am; I don't need a dirty motherfucker like him to tell me things that I already know.

I waited until the guy got up to leave. When he did, I ever-so-subtly stuck my foot out and kicked him in the shin. He lay sprawled out on the floor, and as I walked by, I made a point to step on his male areas. He made this sort of whimpering sound, like a puppy being kicked. I found the sound quite amusing.

I suppose Mistress formulated the same plan, because when she walked by, she did the very same thing. Of course, I was in soft cloth slippers; she was in six-inch stilettos, and she did not mind grinding in that ridiculously sharp heel. Moments like this can change a man's life, I'm proud to say, for better or worse.

Mistress left after the orientation. I was left to find my dormitory room by myself. The Academy grounds were quite large, and they were filled with shinigami of all ages. They all blended together in a multicolored blur of confusion, bad manners, and blatantly bad navigation skills. Needless to say, I was very lost. I didn't have the courage to stop and ask for directions, and I began to suspect that I was turning myself in circles.

Apparently the incident in the auditorium made it around the school rather quickly. Many of the male students made a point to skirt around me as if I would kick them in the balls at random. I was in a relatively powerful position, and I liked that quite a bit. Power is a volatile thing indeed.

I did eventually find my dorm, though it was around midnight before I got to bed. I was set up in the east wing of the dormitories, top floor, and in fifth room. My roommate was already putting the sheets on her bed when I burst through the door, embarrassed and slightly sweaty. The girl seemed a little surprised to see me come in.

My roommate's name was Kai. She was a big girl, stocky, but built solidly with muscle. She hoped to be the first girl to ever make it into Squad Eleven. I wished her luck in her endeavor and told her that my aim was to be put in Squad Twelve. She laughed at me, called me a brainiac.

Surprisingly, even when taking our many differences into account, Kai and I made a great team. She was the brawn. No one called me bad things within earshot of Kai, lest she may force a sex change unto them (looking at the boy who is now the only female with testicles). I was the brain. She never failed an exam with my help (Kai was not very bright). We were like yin and yang; two forces totally unalike, coming together to create a symbiotic relationship.

I'm proud to say that Kai would have been the first woman to ever make it into the Eleventh Squad, I'm sure, if she hadn't been killed. During our final physical exam, the exam determining our placement, a hollow stabbed her through the heart. It was a lucky shot, because I'd certainly never seen anyone -not even the teachers- land a blow on Kai.

I remember how it looked, the way she died. Darkly tinted blood spurted everywhere from her chest, landing in splatters on everything within a fifty-foot radius. The hollow was tearing her body limb from limb, sucking on the marrow from her bones every so often. I was amazed by the amount of blood one body could hold. I never knew so much was packed into such a tiny little form.

Prior to our test, my team had been informed of the identity of this hollow. The teachers said it would give us better advantage over the beast.

This particular hollow was called the Riddler. While he distracted his victims with riddles, the long barbed tail would sneak up from behind, bind the victim, and the Riddler would finish off the attack by beheading the person bound. The Riddler would get a quick and easy meal with incredible efficiency and very little effort.

We -the students- couldn't get close enough to the hollow to kill it, no matter how hard we tried. Every time we would begin to close in, his tail would come from nowhere and knock us back. The tail seemed to be working separately from the body, and it could segment itself to fend off multiple attacks.

All we had were ordinary steel swords; we weren't allowed to use our zanpakutos until we graduated. My little team decided it would take more than brawn to get past him. I and another girl who would later join me in Squad Twelve devised a plan to distract the segments of tail. It could only split four ways, and there were six of us altogether. The three boys in our group and one girl kept the segments of tail preoccupied while I kept the beast itself distracted.

The Riddler began to spout out every rhyme he could think of. I answered maybe half of the questions correctly, but the hollow didn't make a move to kill me. In fact, he seemed delighted that someone could have answered the riddles at all.

The hollow watched me with enormous black eyes, the black eyes of a creature with a soul to match. I was determined not to look at the girl -her name was Daia- who was about to ambush the beast. Instead, I kept staring into those evil eyes, afraid that I would be lost in the dark depths.

I don't understand, and nor do I believe that I ever will, how the Riddler knew Daia was behind him. With great force, he turned and slashed at Daia as she launched forward for the killing stroke. She dodged the attack and her steel sword lodged itself into the nose of the Riddler's mask.

The beast gave a hideous howl and clawed at the sword. With every stroke of its bear-like hand, the sword cracked an even larger hole in the mask. Finally, as it howled with pain, the Riddler dissolved into a puddle of black dust, and then into nothing.

We could find nothing left of Kai but bloodstains. We had a short memorial for her back at the Academy and an acknowledgement at graduation. Before her personal affects were burned, I took the bracelet she always wore. She said it was her good luck bracelet; she left it at home before the mission so it wouldn't get lost.

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After the graduation testing, I was not immediately placed into Squad Twelve. I was sent to the Third Division first to accumulate the recommended hours of stealth training. Due to my exceptional exam scores (books are my friends), I was placed into the fifth seat. At the time, it was the highest seat anyone had ever been placed in upon entrance to the Gotei Thirteen. (My score would later be beaten out by Toshiro Hitsuguya, the fucking little brat.)

Back then, the Third Division was known for being creepy, though Squad Twelve would replace them after Kurotsuchi took the captain's title. It was just a fact everyone knew. Members of Squad Three kept to themselves within the squad, and generally just stayed out of the way. We hid in the shadows and took care of many of the missions that were considered immoral or wrong.

It was on one of these missions that I was taken back to the days of my forgotten youth (if two-hundred plus can be called youthful, really). Another man and I were sent to the fifty-fifth district to investigate a supposed drug smuggling ring. The ring was centered in the same warehouse my drug pusher's had been centered in more than a hundred years earlier.

Kuromaru, my partner, was all for just burning the place down and anyone inside. I couldn't allow this however, and we sneaked in through an old trapdoor I used when I would steal the ginseng tablets.

In the middle of the warehouse sat the biggest pile of pills I'd ever seen. The room was overflowing with tablets of every shape and color, all mixed and muddled together in a rainbow-colored lump. There were four or five incredibly high dealers reeling from the strength of whatever they were taking. They all scooped up handful after handful of narcotics, stuffing them into every spare nook and cranny in their clothes.

When they were all sufficiently doped up, Kuromaru jumped from the support beam he stood on and grabbed one of the dealers by the throat.

"Is this it?" he screamed, shaking the captive man. "Is this all of the drugs?"

The poor man could do nothing but nod his head. Kuromaru threw him down onto the floor and pulled out a match. Right before he dropped the little flame, I scooped up a handful of the narcotics and shoved them into my pocket. What Kuromaru didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

* * *

Apparently what _I_ didn't know could hurt me, though. Even the ginseng tablets hadn't been as strong as the pills I took that night. One of the blue ones had me seeing demons, the pink one made me was to hump everything in sight, and the orange one threw me deep into a deep pit of senseless aggression. I made a promise to myself that I would never take any of those pills again.

I'm lying, of course. I picked out every white tablet in the handful in hopes that it would be ginseng tablets. I was sorely disappointed, however, because the white tablets made me throw up. They were emetics, mistaken by the dealers for narcotics. Most likely, the tiny pills had been sold to the purveyor cheaply and had been subsequently used to rip off the dealers for a pretty penny.

I puked for days after taking them. Kuromaru hovered over me, worried that I'd caught some sort of plague from the filthy gutters. Quite obviously, I didn't tell him that I ingested a handful of stolen emetics.

He was justified in his worrying; I had all the symptoms of a disease. I lost thirty pounds in three days. My hair fell out in thick clumps. My skin turned gray and discolored, and it peeled in odd places. My eyes were yellow with jaundice since my liver was working overtime to filter the narcotics from my blood. I sweat from places I didn't even know it was possible to sweat from.

Kuromaru rushed me to the Fourth Division hospital where I stayed for three months. I was poked so full of holes that by the end of the first month, my arm looked like Swiss cheese. I had more meds pumped into my system than I thought was necessary, and they were all ordered by Captain Unohana. She was exceedingly kind to me, but I did have to tell her that I stole the pills (which were unofficial contraband).

At the end of my hospital stay, she enrolled me in the clinic's rehab program after a strict reprimanding. I had to stay in the hospital an additional two weeks. My duties had been shirked for going on four months, and I was on the verge of being fired.

For stealing the already stolen narcotics, I was given a month's worth of time in the Maggot's Nest. This added another month without a paycheck. I plead with the Captain-General to be let free, and he mercifully and surprisingly agreed. I then had to plead with my captain not to fire me.

I wasn't given the sack, thankfully, but my captain decided he couldn't take someone like me in his squad. He put me up for reassignment. After extensive testing, I was reassigned finally to Squad Twelve. I held the office of seventh seat, and after three weeks, I was the certified head of computer technologies. I was finally where I wanted to be.

* * *

I was in Squad Twelve for three years when a man named Caro Saku came in. He was placed in seat six on spot, which I thought was very impressive. Captain Koriko took the boy under his wing and began getting him involved in the experiments that took place in The Dungeon.

The Dungeon was Captain Koriko's excuse for a lab. It was without adequate lighting, dusty, and strange little lumps of matter were dried in the weirdest places. Most of the equipment was rusty or outdated or just plain disgusting. There weren't any sinks for water and the room never saw the bristly end of a scrub brush. When I finally had the chance to collect those lumpy anomalies, I tested the matter and found most of them to be coagulated blood, bits of intestine, brain matter, and all sorts of grotesque little goodies. No one but Saku ever knew what Koriko did down here, and even he wouldn't tell, though I'm sure the anomalies had something to do with the captain's actions.

Anyhow, in the space of two years, Saku was promoted to lieutenant and I was given the third seat. I was green with jealousy at the boy's promotion, but I was put in charge of all information that was passed through the Seireitei, so my hunger for power (and a larger paycheck) was satiated. It was a tedious job sorting through every minuscule tidbit, and I usually worked late into the night. Saku would often come down and order me to go to bed. He said the whir of the processor was disturbing his sex life. (I didn't think he had much of a sex life, but apparently I was disturbing whoever was up there with him...)

I remember the day I found out what Captain Koriko was doing in The Dungeon. Two men from Division Two came out to our barracks and ordered me to take them to the captain. I tried to inquire as to why they needed him, but they were hell-bent on keeping it a secret from nosy prying officers.

I took them to the captain's quarters and they dismissed me. I, being sneaky, stayed outside with my ear pressed to the door. The men issued orders of Koriko's arrest for the murders of more than forty men and women.

That's when Saku caught me. He took me over to the side to explain what had been going on in the lab. Through the whole story, he looked sick. The color of his face resembled rotten moldy cheese. It would have been funny if the situation wasn't so serious.

Captain Koriko would bring hookers back to the barracks (this was universally known; a person could hear the moaning through three floors), and after having sex with them, he would take them down into The Dungeon. He would strap them to large metal beds, anesthetize them, and hack through the spine, brain, intestines, and anywhere else that looked particularly interesting.

He would take the body parts and analyze them. They would be thoroughly cleaned, soaked in saline solution, and then pickled in alcohol. When someone came to Squad Four with a disease, Koriko would take the files and study the pickled body parts for evidence of the disease. If he found no evidence on any of the specimens, he would go out and find someone who did.

The two men brought Koriko out in reitsu-draining handcuffs. The light threw across his face, and he looked positively demented. I sidled my way behind Saku so I couldn't see him.

Koriko was executed a month later, to the enormous positive view of the Seireitei. Koriko's sex addiction was commonly known to most shinigami, and they were glad to get rid of such an inappropriate captain.

For the first time, I realized that I could have been one of those dead hookers. The day Koriko came to me more than fifty years ago could have been my last day.

I was faced with my own mortality, something I hadn't been confronted with in years. I scared me, and I again felt the fear of death loom over my shoulders like a dank veil. That veil reeked of corpses and alcohol and fluids unknown to me. The death veil smelled like sulfur and burning bodies.

* * *

**10/24/10: I've updated this chapter and made a few corrections.**


	3. Criminal Teachings

_Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. ~Lord Chesterfield_**  
**

* * *

I passed into a deep depression, one where the dank stench of death hung behind me with single-minded intensity. I tried my best to work my way out of it, I really did, but whatever weight hung on my shoulders felt multiplied. In this depression, I once again found solace in the anonymity of narcotics. These were not ginseng tablets this time; they were hardcore substances imported directly from the human world. Even now, I can still see the trail of pinpoint scars on my arms.

Some days, I would stay in my quarters, my duties long forgotten. I could watch the rainbow colors dance across my ceiling, melting and corroding together in lumps of hallucinogenic wonder. All manner of creatures danced through my daydreams; demons, angels, faeries, and many things good and evil. No one bothered me when I was in my slump; blows glanced off and blood shed resembled teardrops of roses falling to the ground. I could bleed black, watch the gray sun, eat the sullen moon, and die a little bit every time.

I was reckless. I fell into a pit of snakes and prostitutes, male and female alike. They all had the same face to me: the face of ignominy. Once shy, twice bitten, they say; the snakes would crawl around me, hissing and biting, sliding in and out, over and under. Fingers, genitals, all the same when they do their pleasurable job. All slimy, dirty creatures, filled with self-importance and desire for sin. I felt sick to my stomach at the sight of them, and even sicker once I realized that I was a hypocrite. I was the same slimy, dirty snake as everyone else. I was no different.

Through my semi-permanent haze, I was in dereliction of duty. In my absence, the computers contracted a virus, causing them to crash. Every last little minuscule smidgen of information was lost. Saku was furious, more so that I'd ever seen him. In fact, before that day, I'd never seen him angry. He always kept every bit of irritation clogged up within himself. I think he was under the impression that I was shook up over Captain Koriko's death, so he never said anything.

For him, the virus was the final straw. The very next day, he came to get me just as I was about to shoot up my first hit of heroin. He knocked the syringe out of my hand and dragged me down to the computers. The screens sat blankly, like a chalkboard that had been washed too many times. Saku had legions of the unseated officers haul down the written forms of every bit of information previously stored on the computers. So began my strenuous task.

I sat behind those computers for more than twenty hours a day. The green glow of the screens was burned into my eyes, and when I slept, I could see it imprinted into my retinas. Saku found my stash of drugs and had them all taken away and destroyed. From there, I went into detox. I felt like Hell itself was crashing down onto my nervous system. It doesn't seem to be common knowledge, but going through heroin detox hurts like a _bitch_. I was not, however, doing massive physical labor, and the detox went as smoothly as a hundred-and-three degree fever and constant pain and twitching could go.

Some days, if he had no Captain-related duties to take care of, Saku would keep me company while I did my job. He would go buy breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a midnight snack -depending on what time of day it was- and share it with me. I think it was more to make sure that I was doing my job and not shooting up, but I was grateful for his company either way. He was relatively pleasant, and I enjoyed his rare presence.

Through the weeks and weeks of constant work, I developed a victim zone that spanned a ten-foot radius. Officers, seated and unseated, made a point to avoid this area like the plague. Anyone who made the mistake of entering the victim zone was met with a string of orders long enough to make my current job look easy. Usually, the officer in question would be ordered to bring up scores more boxes of information, take the finished boxes back down, bring me coffee, bring me aspirin, bring me painkillers (not recommended when it matters what you're typing; makes you loopy as fuck), reboot the computers, run diagnostics, and fetch various items and people. In some respects, the victim had a harder job than me. That was mostly due to the manual labor and the extreme beating their ego went through.

As Saku had yet to choose a lieutenant, I became the temporary defacto vice-captain. I used my Fridays to take care of the lieutenant's duties, and I sat in at the weekly meeting. Oh, that was a boring chore. The Squad One lieutenant -whose name constantly escapes me- made a meal out of the weekly news. He chewed it up and spit it out like one of Kuchiki's private bigot dinners (which I may have crashed one or two or several times...). I was almost glad when Saku chose a lieutenant. Almost. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I felt hate for the lieutenant. It should have been my job.

Hiyori Sarugaki took the lieutenant's seat from me. I guess it wasn't really mine to begin with, but after all the work I did, I think I deserved something more than a nod and a pat on the back. It wasn't long after she became lieutenant that I relapsed once again. It was actually more of a result of her becoming lieutenant. This time Saku paid me no mind, instead deciding to let me drug myself into a coma.

The coma was not figurative language for "hopelessly addicted to drugs" (though I obviously was, and still am). It was a literal coma, and I stayed in it for six weeks. The dealer that I stole from (another raid; I was reduced to stealing drugs like a common criminal) didn't know the exact strength, and one shot put me out.

Once I was out of the coma, I had to be brought back to speed and sent to trial for drugs again. I'd been replaced as third seat (to a complete idiot brought in from Squad Four who, I might add, killed the damn computers on his first diagnostic trial, the dimwit). This time, my trial didn't turn out for the better and I was sent to the Maggot's Nest for an indeterminate amount of time. Or, in the words of the Captain-General, until I learned that "theft would not be tolerated".

* * *

The Maggot's Nest... Like that wasn't a cubic assload of fun. I love the fact that I was a hardworking member of society, and I was being treated like a common criminal. I was an entirely uncommon criminal, what with all of my workload and combine years of service. I'd been given twenty charges of possession of recreational drugs, five charges of theft, two for dereliction of duty, and to add insult to injury, they'd even tried to pin prostitution on me (which I hadn't been guilty of decades).

I suppose if I hadn't been in the Maggot's Nest, I wouldn't have met the man who gave me my life back. At the time, Kisuke Urahara was a third seat in Division Two.

During my twenty year stay, I was given the news that my former captain, Saku, had been promoted to Central 46. He'd been captain less than fifty years, and here he was being promoted to the cream of the crop. Well, whoop-de-fucking-do for him.

Am I to understand that I was to feel happy for this man? A captain less than fifty years, and already in Central 46. I'd been a shinigami for going on two-hundred thirty years and never been more than a third seat with lieutenant's duties. I could not comprehend how fifty years of work as a captain could possibly outweigh the load I'd done and the hell I'd gone through to keep my sanity and my life.

Urahara, though, looked after me while I was there. He made sure that I had clean clothes and bedsheets, that I had good food. Maybe he'd taken a liking to me; I never found out and never cared to. I was just grateful.

No, I take that back -I did find out. It was the captain of Division Two that ordered him to take care of me. Nearly three hundred years ago, Yoruichi Shihouin had been a patron of mine at Mistress's escort service. I had no idea (I'd never met the woman anywhere other than the escort service) how she would have even remembered a common prostitute for so long, but I was grateful.

I'd like to see the asshole who tried to pin prostitution on me eat his heart out over that one.

When the time came for me to leave the Maggot's Nest, Urahara came to collect me. He offered to return my job to me. I would be demoted to the empty fourth seat, but I would have my job back. I said yes without a second thought. That left me wondering, though, who'd taken my position as third seat. I soon found out, much to my disdain.

The new third seat? Mayuri Kurotsuchi, the king creepy motherfucker himself. It was almost an insult to the amount of work I'd done to give that freak the job. He was a misogynistic, sexist pig who took pleasure in demeaning every woman in Squad Twelve, and hell, every woman he came in contact with. I hated him with a burning passion.

I'd first met Mayuri Kurotsuchi in the Maggot's Nest. Shower times were a co-ed thing, since we were treated as a little less than the dirt on the ground. It didn't matter if we were raped or forced to endure the endless flicking of soap in the eyes (I never, never started that _ever_; okay, maybe a few times, but only because we inmates had a long-running feud between cell blocks). No, as long as we weren't out in society causing trouble, it didn't matter what happened to us.

So, after a bout of flicking soap in people's eye, we were taken back to our cells. His lovely abode was a mere ten places down from mine, and he would often comment about mine and everyone else's anatomy as we were escorted back. I didn't need to be reminded of how I looked, so I would often tell him to shut the fuck up. It was a nice prison relationship, and best of all, it was one that didn't include forced intercourse.

Kurotsuchi was second in command of the Research Institute Urahara established (I wasn't lying when I said Vice-Captain Sarugaki was an idiot), a position I envied to my eternal shame. To an extent, he was the second incarnation of Captain Koriko, but instead of hookers, he experimented with artificial placenta. Actually, it was quite interesting. His means of getting the placenta were less than ideal, but his experiments were ingenious really. With Urahara's funding, Kurotsuchi experimented with finding a way to create the perfect soldier.

He created a trial of fifty placenta in an attempt to see if he could cultivate any of them into adulthood. One by one the embryos died as they entered the third trimester. All but one, and to Mayuri's damnation, the survivor was female.

* * *

The day came when Urahara started with his own experiments. By this time, I'd finished with indexing the information for Mayuri's experiments and was supervising Urahara's trials when he had other things to do, which wasn't often. He stayed holed up in the former Dungeon (he had remodeled it during my lengthy absence), which was no longer dark and dank, but brilliantly white and pristinely clean.

As it turned out, Urahara had made good friends with Yoruichi Shihouin during his stint in Squad Two. As Urahara became more and more reclusive, she started hanging around Division Twelve, clearly more from boredom than lack of work. While she stood around, I decided to try my luck.

I have been rejected by numerous men and women before. A person doesn't live four-hundred plus years without a lot of rejection. It's just a fact of life. While it's difficult to tell a person's orientation sometimes, I've developed a sixth sense for that kind of thing. Well, of course not really a sixth sense, but as I watched people of all different orientations interact, I've learned to tell the signs by the face they face people.

Plus, it does help that she'd been a patron of mine before.

The art of homosexual interaction is a bit different than heterosexual interaction. As such, it is different for two males and two females to interact. Men are sometimes open, but are uncomfortable by the stares they receive and are generally a victim of painful ridicule. Women are a little more open, but reactions toward them can range from negative to men getting hard-ons.

Whoever said that homosexuality (or, in our case, bisexuality) is not a choice was only half right. Men don't really have a say in their orientation. They are "looking for the right dick" as a good friend of mine put it. Women have a say, though. We make our choice. We make our choice to disregard whatever image society has force-fed us about the sins of loving the same sex. We have chosen to defy.

The first thing I did was thank her. I was already a scarred, sick-looking mess, but her covert orders of care while I was in the Maggot's Nest prevented further damage to my appearance. My hair, my nice brown hair, was the last highlight of my appearance. The fact that I'd been given a longer shower period (and shampoo that was not used with a dual purpose to scrub my own ass) had probably saved it.

The second thing I did was hug her. I am not a hands-on, huggy person. I've been touched by enough people in my lifetime, and I don't like physical contact, from men especially. I broke a man's fingers for touching my arm once on impulse (I did send him a get-well card; it was an accident).

The absence of true affection can have serious repercussions on a person. Without the comforting touch of someone during critical developmental periods, a person can become phobic of skin-to-skin contact. As such, without that physical affection, a person's emotional and social skills can become underdeveloped as well. I am well aware by now that I am a bitter, hateful shrew in the eyes of most of my friends and coworkers. Needless to say, I crash the Halloween party every year.

Yoruichi and I began to talk like civilized people, about the weather, about friends. We gossiped like most women did. I felt normal. I didn't want to be doped up. I didn't want to forget anymore.

During the time that Urahara was holed up doing his little experiments, Yoruichi came to me. Previously, I'd kind of gotten the vibe that those two were together, or at least they would like to have been. The way they looked at each other with a glance of affectionate knowing sort of set the stage. That didn't bother me in the least, though, and I as long as I could keep Yoruichi for a while, I didn't care one way or the other what they were doing.

I have never been comfortable with the concept of love. The metaphysical representation of care and affection beyond friendship was strange to me, as I had never known it. I don't think I would know if I'd ever been in love; I had no example to go by.

For that simple reason, I could not knowingly say that I loved Yoruichi. Whatever affection she felt for me was lost between nights and days of alcohol and sex. Personally, I don't think either one of us could have known what love was even if it crawled into bed with us.

That's not to say that Urahara was missing out. On the few days that he emerged from the genius cave, he and Yoruichi would go off to themselves. I followed once, and I promised that I would never do that again. Watching other people together is not my idea of a wonderful night.

So, with the knowledge that I was a bitter, unloving harpy, I carried on with life. I was happy for a while.

Then came the Central 46 fiasco.

* * *

I don't understand this completely, and unless I see Urahara or Yoruichi again, I doubt I will.

Someone had been noticing strange behavior with some of the shinigami. These shinigami were test subjects under the private employment Kisuke Urahara. When they exploded into a rage, and Urahara and another assistant, Tessai, were put on trial for creating these 'vizards', or shinigami with hollow powers.

Yoruichi broke into Central 46 during the trial process, and along with Urahara, Tessai, Vice-Captain Sarugaki, and quite a few other people, escaped to the human world.

My squad was in disarray; the place looked like a tornado and an earthquake had been going at it. The Special Forces squad went through every ounce of information about every experiment Urahara conducted. My meticulously indexed information, all neatly printed on Rolodex and entered into the computers, was taken and destroyed. Every bit of information from my computer systems was erased.

Worst of all, Mayuri Kurotsuchi was now the captain. A man who'd been with me in the Maggot's Nest, who'd put in even less active time than Saku, was now my captain, my superior.

And I was back at third seat. Goddamn that bastard.

His lieutenant, and the woman who once again stole my job from me, was none other than the only placenta that lived through his experiments. The girl had grown to adult proportions, though she was roughly only a toddler's age in shinigami years. She knew virtually nothing of being a shinigami, don't even start on being a lieutenant, and guess who had to be the one to teacher her while 'daddy' was doing his own thing? Me, obviously. I was doing work for two, babysitting, and supervising experiments all for the same perks and pay I'd lived with for centuries. Lovely.

I wouldn't call Nemu a handful, as she certainly wasn't, but she was utterly clueless to the world around her. It took me decades to cultivate acceptable social skills, and now I had to teach them to a girl virtually devoid of emotion. I was quite literally one of the worst people for the job. I mean, what the hell was I going to teach her? How about the mechanics of sex when she didn't even know the anatomy of a human being? We might have even gone into the standard correct method for shooting heroin. Or, how about I show her what a Broken Cowboy was?

Well, my job was to teach, so I let her little sponge mind soak up the knowledge of the criminally drug-addled.

Speaking of drugs, I fell down in the pit again. While I dragged my foster darling around, I was high enough to look down and see the clouds instead of the ground. That was, until Kurotsuchi got wind of what I was doing. He had those drugs out of his division so fast, I didn't even realize what he was doing.

Nevertheless, despite my inadequate teaching skills, Nemu learned. It may not have been anything useful, but she damn well learned something.

* * *

**So, who's going to take time out of their super-ultra-busy day of reading fanfiction and review me?**


	4. Disembodied Disease

_Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. - Aldous Huxley_**  
**

* * *

Nemu Kurotsuchi fascinated me in the same way that small children did. She was full of awe and wonderment; she was naive and though I tried to get her to speak, she was adamant about silence. The only difference was Nemu resembled a fully cultivat- eh, grown woman (sorry, Twelfth Squad tendencies; she was technically an experiment after all). She kept the same childlike wonder, and I encouraged it. Of course, like anything good, daddy dearest sought to stamp it out.

I thought Mayuri was cruel to people, especially women, in general, but he hated Nemu. He looked at her, not like a sentient being, but like a dead cat or a particularly large cockroach. Or a diseased, disembodied penis. It was disgusting. He abused her and used her to perform experiments that were deemed too dangerous for the new recruits and unseated officers.

Nemu aside, I was amazed by what he did to my squad. The majority of the officers who didn't apply to be reassigned were used in Mayuri's experiments. Some of them came out radioactive or dead, at least until he figured out what our limitations were. He tried to give me snake fangs (I was kind of excited about that), but I came out of the operating room with an artificial urinary tract. At least I haven't had a bladder infection since.

I remember taking Nemu to her first lieutenant's meeting. Up until that day, I'd been attending them and keeping up the chores of the second-in-command. I'd come to think of those meetings as nap time, as nothing ever happened. Of course, Vice Captain What's-His-Face (still can't remember the man's name; all I can ever think about is his Hispanic mustache) didn't think that Squad Twelve could have two representatives present at once, so on he-of-the-Manchu-'Stash's orders, I left Nemu to her first meeting.

Oh, what a horrible choice that was. Somehow, she ended up setting the building on fire with nothing but a bottle of juice and a large match. So, Manchu 'Stash reevaluated his original orders and told me to take Nemu around the Seireitei so she couldn't set anything else on fire. It was the first moment I felt truly proud of my foster darling. I even teared up a little, but it could have just been the smoke.

Mayuri generally liked to keep Nemu on hand in case one of his twisted ideas called to be performed, so he didn't appreciate me taking her on a tour. Neither did the majority of the captains for that matter, as I insisted on latching onto a friend or acquaintance and personally showing her around the Division grounds. Captain Ukitake didn't really mind (never does), and neither did Aizen (too nice) or Ichimaru (he's a little cunt if I ever saw one), but the rest sure did.

Okay, I'm lying. It wasn't the majority. Kyoraku was drunk, so he didn't see anything. Hisagi vouched for us in the Ninth Division (Tousen wanted to cut our heads off and send me back to the Maggot's Nest) because he owed me for lunch from the week before. We managed to sneak around Kuchiki and his redhead lackey without incident. Zaraki was off somewhere killing squirrels or other creatures, but his vice-captain latched onto _us_ and demanded I give her a piggyback ride. I suppose the Captain-General was taking a nap (you can here the snoring all the way to the third division barracks). We got chased out of the Tenth Division by the short one, but that was kind of fun. The rest of the captains minded though.

I think that Nemu thoroughly enjoyed the tour, even if she didn't show it. Mayuri certainly wasn't pleased when we came back. I'd inadvertently deferred his experimentation, and he was angrier than an ant bed filled with coals. I was put on errand duty (it's not so much a chore as a festering pain in the ass) for a month.

* * *

About three weeks into my errands, I came face to face with the demon. Captain Kenpachi Zaraki, resident ass kicker and the man with the second biggest ego (looking at you, Mayuri) in the Seireitei.

I'd only seen him from far away, and when I got close, I was stuck by his appearance. It wasn't scars, goodness knows I have no room to talk about scars, but the sheer size of him was astounding. He wasn't less that seven and a half feet, totally dwarfing my puny five-foot-five stature. He was all bulging muscles and testosterone, not unlike most of the Eleventh Division, but none of his subordinates were so intimidatingly large. It was frightening, yet strangely sexy.

Before I go any further with this, I will say that in my career as a prostitute to the poor and rich alike, I have met some freaks. I've met men of every size and shape, of every color and race, hell, I've even met men who weren't fully my species. Every last one of them were strangely shaped or abnormal in some way or other (else they wouldn't be coming to the bondage-a-go-go service). Don't even get me going on some of the women I've met because it only goes downhill from there.

Point is, if said point can be found, I don't find many people alluring anymore. Sexual appeal is almost gone for me, save for the most extreme, raw power. Yoruichi had that power, that plain feminine power that is so sadly hard to find. That's why I liked her. Rangiku Matsumoto has that same feminine power, but that's another story entirely. What I'm saying is that Kenpachi Zaraki had the male form of that power, a raw appeal that was very nearly overpowering. Is he the traditional good-looking, all around sexual fantasy like Byakuya Kuchiku? No. But Zaraki had it in his own way, and I really liked that.

I have a summary in my personal endeavors, and it goes something like this: what I really like, I really want, and I will do whatever it takes to get it. It worked with Yoruichi, it worked with Matsumoto (maybe I'll tell that story another time; oh boy is it a good one), and it was damn sure going to work with Kenpachi Zaraki. Even if I had to be at my worst to get it.

* * *

It was a morning for errands when I met the demon. Nemu, who was still hanging from my arm, decided that the Eleventh Division was not her favorite place, mostly because she modified her uniform into a miniskirt (I told her not to do it, but she took Matsumoto's advice instead of mine). I seem to remember that I wore my hair down that day, which I don't usually do.

I walked into his office without knocking, not that he really cares anyway, and was met with a bloody mess. I never asked what exactly had been acurrate enough to tear him to pieces. I didn't think it would have been a great conversation starter to use with a man with an ego as large as his. He'd pulled off the top half of his uniform, and long gashes ripped down his chest in angry red flames. His blood dripped down in appetizing little rivulets.

On that day, I learned that not even the Eleventh Squad is immune to pain.

As I walked in, he glared at me with the eye that wasn't covered up. He gave me a good once-over, evaluating me the same way he would an opponent. It was a habit that ranked second only to drinking in the Eleventh Squad. In a manner reminiscent of a dog, he growled, "The fuck do you want?"

Something burned in my stomach, a mix of annoyance, appreciation, and an overwhelming sense to shave his eyebrows while he was asleep. Not that the latter would have been very smart. He probably sleeps with his eyes open and his sword in hand waiting for something to stab (makes me feel sorry for any unfortunate mice in the vicinity). "Captain Kurotsuchi needs your signature on these papers, sir."

I handed him the horrendous stack of papers I held in my grasp. He glanced at the cover and back at me. "What for?"

Oh, fun. I really would love to explain the mechanics of sex and the contraction of STD's to a man in charge of one of the dirtiest squads in the Seireitei. "Third Officer Madarame has agreed to undergo experimental testing of a drug developed to help diminish gonorrhea, of which he has a flaming case of. I need your signature because he'll be unconscious for seventy-two hours, and he needs your permission to be absent from duty."

He took the papers from me and read over them at a mind-numbingly slow pace. The good news was he could read, which I'd always been uncertain about. Finally, after I thought I was just going to have to forge his signature, he signed them. "Dumbass. He doesn't need experimental testing, he needs a new brain. Tell me, brainiac, has your squad figured out how to make people smarter?"

Oh, I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you Captain? I answered this with as straight a face as I could muster. "No, sir, but I assure you that we are working on that day and night."

"Hmph," he mumbled, glaring at me as if I'd inadvertently insulted him, which I had. He tried to move his arms, but a very slight grunt of pain escaped his thin lips as the muscles in his chest contracted under the gashes. He appraised me again with something that wasn't quite blind annoyance anymore. "You know first aid, brainiac?"

"I teach a seminar at the hospital once a month, so yes," I said. I was the assistant, but it was true enough. I'd gleaned some amount of information over the thirty-odd years.

"Good," he said, gesturing at his torso. I had no trouble looking at that part of his body, nor any of the other large, well-formed parts. "Fix me."

I raised an eyebrow. Was he not aware that I couldn't do anything but stop the bleeding? His reitsu was too high for me to pierce his skin with a needle so I could stitch the skin together, but even so, I doubted the stitches would last long in him. He needed a healer's touch to pull the skin back together, and I am certainly not a healer. I could bind his chest, keep him from moving until Captain Unohana could see to him, but that was it.

"I can stop the bleeding, but you're going to have to go to the infirmary eventually, sir," I drawled. There was no obvious sign of a first-aid kit in sight, which there should have been. I would know. I was at the meeting that made it protocol. I sat through all seven hours of debate between the captains and vice-captains. Still, I had to keep my mouth shut; I wasn't actually a vice-captain. "Does this squad even own a first-aid kit?"

Zaraki grunted. From the look on his face, he wasn't actually sure. I watched as he rolled his office chair over to the open window, stuck his head outside, whipped out his horribly beaten zanpakuto, and knocked on the window of the floor above. I heard the window below slide open and a decidedly snide, effeminate voice drifted into the room.

"Ayesagawa!" Zaraki barked, slamming his sword against the windowsill above. I could hear evidence of the wood splintering under the rusty sword. A few toothpick-sized bits of wood fell. "Where's the fucking first-aid kit?"

"In the supply closet in your office. Lieutenant put it back there last time she got into the painkillers." The snide voice of Yumichika Ayesagawa slipped easily past the window and the muscled bulk in front of it. Now Ayesagawa I could get along with. He was snide, sarcastic, and ultimately in love with himself; like most of the woman I know, except with better hair. Or a better wig. That's a matter of a different topic, though.

Zaraki looked at me expectantly; of course he wasn't going to get the damn thing _himself_. It was up to me to do the manual labor. I strode over to the closet and braced myself in case of an avalanche, as a person so often experiences in the Twelfth Squad. To my surprise, the white wooden door swung open smoothly; the inside of the closet was perfectly organized without a pencil or paper out of place. Why did I expect an avalanche? Earth to Arisu, this is the Eleventh Squad; nothing in this supply closet would _ever_ be touched.

I rummaged around behind an unopened box of wooden pencils for the kit. It didn't take long before I was sneezing profusely; there was a layer of dust as thick as the width of my wrist covering everything. The kit lay off to the side and I wrestled it out from behind the pencil box.

I unlatched the case; it was nearly untouched except for the painkillers. The bottle had been torn open, apparently, but Lieutenant Kusajishi. You'd think after a hundred years, even if a person had the mindset of a ten-year-old, they could figure out not to touch piles of medicine (I am definitely one to talk). I pondered this quietly as I popped open the broken top of the body. I peered down into the little cylinder. There were three pills left, two of which I handed to Zaraki. The third I downed while my back was turned.

"Pull off the top half of your uniform and take those," I said quickly. I stripped open a package of gauze pads and pulled out the container of hydrogen peroxide. "This will hurt even you, Captain."

He made a scoffing noise, but swallowed the pills with a loud gulp. Yuck. I, for one, hate taking pills without water; it's just weird. I stripped open one of the sterile gauze pads, shook up the peroxide, and administered a liberal measure of the fizzing purple liquid to the pad. It hissed gently as it touched the cotton fibers. It was a quiet sound, almost soothing; that is, until it touches your skin. Like a snake, really; disconcerting, but so very painful.

I touched the soaked pad to the open wound. Try as he might, even Kenpachi Zaraki is not immune to pain. He let out a hiss through his thin lips and his knuckles turned white as he clasped the arms of the chair. I wiped over the rest of the gashes as quickly as I could. After all, a beast is most dangerous when it is in pain. What else can be said for Zaraki?

I had to make him sit up so I could bind his chest. That's when I noticed he wasn't sitting straight. Yes, I understand that with large tears ripped in a person's flesh, sitting up is a rough job, but he wasn't exactly leaning over. No, that doesn't make sense, does it? How should I put this? He sat like a lame dog; one leg was hiked up a little. There were a few possibilities: his tore a muscle, his ass was bruised, or his leg was broken. The left leg sat at an awkward angle, so I was ninety-nine point eight percent sure it was the last one. So, with as much dignity and finesse as I could muster, I said:

"Take off your pants, captain."

There was a pause, during which I made a mental note to slap myself when I was out of sight. Make no mistake, I've said that before, but that was under less public circumstances. I realized that I probably just lost whatever instance of dignity I had left, which wasn't much to begin with. I decided making a total douchbag of one's self should be a recognized art, one which I would be a master of.

Just when I thought his eyebrow couldn't go higher, he cranked it up another notch. There was a slight grin on his torn face. "I heard from my subordinates you were a whore. You don't take it slow, do ya, Tanaka?"

A nice, large bottle of whiskey would be in order later on tonight. I told myself to keep a straight face; as much as I would liked to have laughed, that urge was overpowered by my irritation at the word 'whore'. Bar stories; gotta love 'em. I sighed, "That did not come out the way I intended."

He laughed. It was a deep, rumbling sound laced with generous amounts of testosterone. I can tell you, my hormones started pumping overtime. It was like a legion of little shinigami bodybuilders were knocking around in my brain -admittedly, very naked ones. I liked that rumbling laugh a lot more than I should have.

I held my hand in front of my face. "What I meant to say was: you can pull the rest of your uniform back on, but I need to see your leg. It's sitting at an odd angle. Therefore, I will need you to remove your pants."

He stripped out of them at my request, a little too eagerly, I might add. Lesson one of prostitution: they all think they're gonna get it. That's the problem with the male libido -it works too well.

There was a dark purple bruise stretching from mid-calf to mid-thigh coloring the side of his leg. A definite twist showed that his kneecap was broken, and after coaxing it into a better position, I placed a metal splint next to his leg and wrapped a long length of gauze around it. I can't heal, but at least I can fix things. People are like computers; parts break and grow outdated, and someone else has to be the one to fix them. I just happened to be that person at the time.

I didn't offer another word (trying to save a little face), and Zaraki didn't offer any thanks. I didn't expect him to, really; Squad Eleven isn't known for its universally good manners. They just kick ass and claim they do all the _real_ work in the Seireitei (I may be biased, but it is definitely Squad Twelve that does the work).

I collected my signed papers and all but ran out, leaving the medical kit strew out for Zaraki to deal with. It was time for that nice big bottle of whiskey.

* * *

**I finally brought in Zaraki. Opinions on the first appearance?**

**Oh, and I realized I've never given the "me" a name. If you couldn't pick out the two little mentions, the "me" is called Arisu Tanaka.**


	5. Blank Virtuoso

_We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. ~Denis Diderot  
_

* * *

I nearly ran down the paved pathway leading to the Tenth Division. Fighting the urge to have some muscled, sweaty brute beat the hell out of me, I neurotically straightened the heap of paper's in my arms. How could I have ordered Zaraki to take his pants off? Damn, that'll be another stupid bar story by the end of the week. I wasn't so much embarrassed as I was stunned at my own lack of the ability to control my mouth. I felt like such an idiot. Well, at least someone else could benefit from my slip-up.

In retrospect, it was kind of funny. Arisu Tanaka, serious bitch extraordinaire, made a joke. I could almost see the stage lights in my mind. Some guy in a pair of headphones is behind the curtain, holding up queue cards. Sign one: cue drum roll, deliver line, follow up with a head/palm motion, finish with a lame attempt at a correction. Sign two: audience then laughs, proceeds to use joke as drunken fairytale fodder. The Legend of Tanaka, they'll call it. The newspaper headlines will read as '_Drug Addled Ex-Con Wants to Get With Badass Captain!_'

Hey, call it overreacting, but I'm accustomed to being the go-to girl for all sorts of stealthy academic shit. Forgive me for freaking out over something that clearly does not denote intelligence.

It didn't matter. Zaraki would forget it soon enough. In the middle of my mental breakdown, I remembered that I needed to find Nemu and escort her back to Mayuri. The captain was probably shitting bullets by then. His test subject and the druggie bitch had been gone for more than seven hours. Quite long enough for him to drum up at least ten more experiments that needed to be tested. Mayuri would be sure to come up with some sort of fun little punishment for me. Oh, joy.

I could see it now. After dodging multiple swings from some sort of large surgical steel pan (one possibly filled with gastro-intestinal fluids or fatty breast tissue), I would be assaulted by a needle filled with morphine. A mask would be placed over my face as I fell flat on my ass, halfway to the acid trip of a lifetime. Clouds of anesthesia would flood my nose and inhibit my brain. I would lose consciousness and take a nice, long nap. In ten hours, I'd wake up with horns on my ass or forks for toes or a beak where there shouldn't be. That's only skimming the surface. It wasn't the worst I could think of; the last guy with experimentation duty came out radioactive with tentacles coming out of his-.

Well, you get the picture.

I found Nemu outside the tenth division. She was as expressionless as always; her smooth baby face without a line or wrinkle or blemish (lucky little bugger). Her hands were clasped to her sides in a noncommittal gesture. A red-haired woman (more orange than red, really) was doubled over just so that her shapely behind was poking out for all who walked by to see. Not that I was looking or anything.

I stopped next to Rangiku Matsumoto as she was fussing over Nemu's skirt. Rangiku was muttering to herself, making all sorts of adjustments. A little tweak here, a large pull there, or my favorite, 'Here Nemu, let's just expose your perky breasts a little bit more so that you'll be ogled by all the men, lesbians, and bisexuals that walk past. Really, Officer Tanaka doesn't have enough to do already. Let's just force her to whip some ass with her big fat sword, and yes that is a euphemism.' She didn't really say that, but I could hear the thought process swirling around in her manipulative little head.

No, what my friend Rangiku really said went along these lines:

"You'll never find a rich man to marry you if you dress like a matron!" Rangiku exclaimed. She fiddled with the hem of Nemu's skirt, rolling it up at least three inches higher. Like it wasn't short enough as it is.

I cut in before my foster darling's privates were exposed to the public, whacking Rangiku's knuckles with my stack of papers. "You'll turn her into rape bait if you shorten her skirt anymore, Lieutenant. Goodness knows I have enough trouble keeping the men away from her as it is."

Rangiku jerked her hands away from the skirt and fixed me with a sharp eye. Her blue eyes worked me up and down, scrutinizing everything from the state of my clothes to the discoloration of my skin. When she was finally satisfied that I was in relatively healthy condition, she broke into a wide grin and winked at me. "You should be proud, Third Officer Tanaka. Maybe you can pick up on some of her leftovers."

Her gentle teasing was not so gentle, I decided. Rangiku was truly more like my mother than my friend at times. Always complaining that I didn't get enough sunlight, my skin was gray, my hair was dry and brittle, my clothes were ruffled, I was looking too thin, I was being a bitch more often than not; the list just goes on and on. There was nothing I could do about her fussy nature other than just go with it and tune her out when she went on a rampage.

"Judging by the fact that _you_, in in spite of your voluptuous cup size and your frilly thongs, are not married, I'd say that your system doesn't work as well as you think it does, Rangiku," I sniffed, rolling my eyes. Oh, how I do love to make my peers eat their words. "I need my surrogate dumpling back, Lieutenant. Captain Kurotsuchi is probably shitting steel doorknobs by now."

"We wouldn't want an excess of steel doorknobs, would we, Arisu?" Rangiku said, winking. She fiddled with the collar of her plunging neckline. I -amazingly- didn't mention her extreme need of a bra.

"No, because I'd have to be the one to clean them up!" I snapped. I took Nemu by the arm after tugging the hem of her skirt down about five inches. Now, at least, she didn't look like a street hooker.

I pulled Nemu along; she didn't protest or pull away, so I continued with my dragging. I turned back momentarily to Rangiku. "Come by the Horse's Head later tonight, you gossip-mongering floozy. I've got a good story!"

Rangiku waved in our direction dismissively; I took it that she would come around later. She never could resist the temptation of a good, strong, and best of all, free drink. I usually ended up buying when we went out, therefore I limited my excursions to the bare absolute minimum. Rangiku could drink men twice her size under the table, so she tended to cost me a veritable fortune. Sadly, I make a miser's wage; my problem lies out in the open.

It was a short walk to our division, and as we entered, Nemu and I were met with a seething Captain. Oh boy, he was _pissed_. There were streams of smoke coming from his ears, and I'm willing to bet that I could have made him shoot fire from his nostrils if he hadn't been wearing a mask. He grabbed Nemu by the arm, his ridiculously long fingernails digging into her skin just hard enough to draw blood.

At the sight of my lieutenant's blood, my rage boiled to match his own. One day, I would make him pay for all that he did to my lieutenant. Today, however, was not that day. I knew that day wouldn't come until I was ready to bear the responsibility of a captain, and I just didn't want that many lives in my hands. I would have to settle for putting shaving cream in his sandals when he wasn't looking.

Mayuri glared at me and pointed with his middle finger towards my victim zone of computers (which everyone avoided like so much radioactive feces). "You have an assignment. Move your ass."

I gave a half-assed salute. "Of course, Captain."

I stepped over to established lines of my victim zone (they're marked with yellow tape) and plopped down into my spinning, rolling chair. I paid damn good money for that chair. It was stitched, upholstered leather and I made sure it maintained a well-oiled shine at all times. The arms and back are made of tempered steel and it has a special cup holder for my coffee. I love that chair more than crack.

Sitting on my desk was a thick paper folder. I'd never had an assignment folder of that size. What kind of mission was I about to embark on? I thought it was probably some kind of complicated report from the captain that had to be logged into the division database, but I was so very wrong. That folder turned out to be the absolute biggest headache I'd had in three hundred years.

I opened the folder, thinking it was just a load of graphic and gory data, and was instantly hit with a throbbing migraine. On the very top page was an official statement, an unarguable statement; meaning, no matter how big a tantrum I threw, I couldn't get out of this.

"_By order of Captain-General Yamamoto, Third Officer Arisu Tanaka will hereby lead a team of intelligence officers. Please assemble your team from these hand-picked shinigami hopefuls. We hope you have a successful trial, and we will be in contact as soon as your assembled team is reported. Thank you."_

Just what I needed. More people to care about. At least I got a pay raise.

* * *

Eight hours later, I sat in a dusty little bar somewhere deep within the confines of the second district. I held a glass of whiskey in hand, which I hadn't yet touched. I'm not much of a drinker. Apart from whiskey, I abhor alcohol. It leaves this funny taste in your mouth and this boiling feeling in your stomach. I just can't stand the stuff; I was at a loss to how Rangiku could.

Speaking of which, my friend had already left for the night with a thin, lean shinigami I recognized from my folder. I could see at least five of the men from my folder crammed into this room; most of them were already sweating profusely and reeling from the one or two or ten beers they'd chugged down. Like I said, I'm at a loss to how they could stand the stuff.

I swirled the last dregs of my one shot of whiskey around in my glass. Even whiskey isn't that good. I pushed it away, sick to my stomach. I couldn't get the thought of that folder out of my head. I wasn't capable of leading a team. I was barely capable of maintaining a decent working friendship. What was I going to do with a crack squad of shinigami that I had to manage lest they be left to their own devices? I suppose I could unload a ton of work on them, but I would eventually have to start training them a little.

I slammed my fist against the bar. Wow, that sure did help; after making sure I hadn't splintered my knuckle, I downed the shot of whiskey and got up to leave. I decided that getting rip-roaring drunk was nowhere near as fun alone as it was with a friend.

I stepped out onto the cobbled street of the second district. There was a slight chill in the night, but I didn't think anything of it. I like the cold.

Behind me, I heard the shattering of glass. From the front of a clothing store, a man in black held a thick wooden club and a halo of broken glass shards surrounded him. I debated on just going back to the barracks, but I knew that deep down inside, if I didn't beat the hell out of this idiot, I would really regret it. Plus, I needed to let off a little steam anyway.

I had my zanpakuto with me; I took it off only to sleep and shower. I found it was sufficient enough to discourage most unruly behavior, but as I unsheathed it, it seemed that this idiot wasn't fazed. So, he was a masochist? Well, I'd be happy to oblige his bloody tendencies.

In the blink of an eye, my weapon was at his throat. I pressed the blade against his neck, allowing it to cut into the flesh just so that a tiny rivulet of blood trickled freely into his collar. I love the sight of blood; it's so dark and luscious, and it gives off this wonderful sticky sweet smell. A tiny nodule of bloodlust crept down into my stomach, and I pressed down a little harder onto his neck. Blood streamed down, my blade dangerously close to his jugular vein.

The would-be thief whimpered with pain. Oh, I loved that sound, too. I drew back my arm, fully prepared to slice his head off so that his blood would come pouring out, but the idiot fuck ducked as I started into the swing. I gritted my teeth.

"Could've been a clean swing, but you just had to move..." I mumbled to myself. I watched him run down the street, clutching his neck as blood dripped between his fingers. I didn't think I'd cut him that deep, but perhaps I'd underestimated how hard I was pressing. "Alright, motherfucker, do you want it that way?"

I took off like a demon, speeding down the cobbled street until I was neck and neck with the thief. He was breathing hard and had lost maybe a pint of blood. There wasn't enough oxygen moving through his bloodstream to allow him to carry on for much longer. I could have let him bleed out on his own, but that isn't how I operate. I like to see things through to the end.

I swung my zanpakuto, and with a satisfying _thwack_, his head came clean off. A great spray of blood showered my face and clothes, and I wiped away a bead of the sticky liquid from my eyes. I sighed; my plainclothes were covered with blood. It looked like I'd committed a murder instead of a service.

I wiped the blade of my zanpakuto on my pants. No reason to be nit-picky now; my clothes were without hope. Not even Mayuri had figured out a way to get bloodstains out of clothes.

In the deafening darkness, I heard laughing. Deep, masculine, and pumped with more testosterone than a living-world bodybuilder. It was the laugh that I liked so much, the laugh from earlier magnified times ten. It was Captain Zaraki's laugh; the beautiful call that started the systems of hormonally-crazed horny women everywhere. That group included me, apparently. It was like getting a hit of Ecstasy without the sting of a needle.

I looked up to see Zaraki sitting on the roof of a nearby building. He was laughing to himself, shaking his head in my direction, and fingering the ugly, worn zanpakuto in his hand. Was I amusing, I wondered. Did I merit being laughed at for something? What the hell was he doing all the way out here?

"Something funny, sir?" I asked, a pulse of irritation winding through my body. I don't like being laughed at. Not at all.

Zaraki slid down from the roof of the building, landing with a hard thump onto the ground. He sheathed his rusty sword and grinned down at me. His teeth were sharp, the canines like shark fangs. That was even more irksome; the smiling, the laughing. What the hell was so fucking funny?

"Why didn't you kill him before he ran?" the captain asked. The laughing tapered to a rumbling chuckle, like the beginnings of a thunderstorm. My hormones were so confused; I liked the laugh, but I don't like being laughed at. I hate my hormones.

"I like a good chase. It's more fun than just getting the business done," I replied, glaring. I scratched at a bead of blood that was drying on my cheek. My hand came away covered in a dusting of cracked black blood. "Why are you laughing?"

"Is it that fucking important?" he replied cheekily. He crossed his arms over his wide chest and glared down at me with the one eye that was visible. "I didn't think you fucking brainiacs could even lift a sword."

"All shinigami receive the same training," I started, "and you've obviously never seen my captain wield a scalpel, sir."

I started walking down the street, picking drying blood out from under my fingernails. Blood is only beautiful when it's wet. After it drys, it's just a lot of scratching and irritation. It really starts to itch when it turns black and gets crusty, like little parasites digging down into the flesh of the soiled area. I would have to scrub hard to get this shit off.

"What's with all the 'sir' shit?" Zaraki called. I turned back to look at him. He towered over me by at least a foot and a half of muscle and sheer intimidation. The bandages from earlier were wrapped around his chest, and he didn't pay any mind to his still-broken leg. He still hadn't been to see Captain Unohana. "Didn't take you for one to set store by the rules."

"It's a sign that I recognize you as an authority figure," I replied. He'd stopped laughing, and his eye stared me down with the intensity of a predator who'd cornered a particularly insolent prey. "Not exactly a rule."

"Anyone ever told ya you're a bitch?" he asked. He looked dead serious now.

Here we go again, someone else telling me things that I already know. I snapped, "Quite a few people, actually. I'm old and it comes with the job."

And with that, I walked away. I didn't wait for him to respond, didn't stick around to be questioned, didn't wait to be glared at further. I was tired, and I had a long day ahead of me. Trials for this new team of mine were scheduled to begin tomorrow, and I had to come up with a method of testing that didn't include dissection.

Faster than my eye could track, Zaraki cut me off. He jumped in front of me, blocking a good portion of the street around him. He bent down to my eye level, knocking off a foot and a half of imposing stature, and stared right at me like I was a piece of meat. There was a nice smell playing around him, all male but sweet like syrup. Something else to confuse my raging hormones.

"Ya don't look that old," he said. He tugged at a strand of my hair, which I'd left down. "You're kinda hot, actually."

"Careful, sir, that's harassment," I said, but I couldn't resist a smile. I don't get complemented that often. Mostly I use my biting wit and mean disposition as a shield against come-ons. Men don't like "difficult women" like the oh-so lovable me.

"I don't give a fuck," he said, his voice low and scratchy.

I liked that attitude, but I didn't want to stick around. There was a load of itching blood clinging to my body, and I wanted to give my clothes a spirited attempt at cleanliness. I skirted around Zaraki and took off down the street, calling a teasing goodnight. I really needed a shower and some sleep. Dissecting my future subordinates would take energy.

* * *

**I don't like this chapter. It annoys me. I don't like the interaction here, but I reworked it fifteen times. I got tired of doing it over and over.**

_****As of 9/3/10, this story is abandoned.**_


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